Articles for Athletes

“If you couldn’t play at all, would you be a valuable teammate every day?”

–Brad Stevens

Be honest:

When you get injured;

When you foul out of the game;

When your coach pulls you out because of a mistake;

When your teammate beats you out for playing time;

When you think your coach should be playing you, instead of someone else;

When your friends and family think you should be playing more;

When you’re constantly reminded that people only care about the number of minutes you play, and the points you score; and

When you’ve shown up for 4 years, gave your best every day, and you still won’t play a “meaningful minute” all season long…

Throughout all this, will you still be a valuable teammate every day?

Will you be a valuable teammate:

In practice?

After practice?

In the weight-room?

On the bench during games?

During the warm-up before the game?

In the locker-room at halftime?

In the locker-room after the big win?

In the locker-room after the big loss?

In group chats and on social media?

In the hallway, when you pass by the teammate who’s playing instead of you?

Will you still be a valuable teammate:

When you don’t think it matters?

When life is unfair?

When coaches are stupid?

The bottom line is this: Will your body language, energy, words, and actions serve the team? Or will they serve you?

Why It Matters So Much

Why does this matter so much? Well, it matters because great teams aren’t just made up of stars, starters, and coaches. Great teams are made up of a collective group of people who enthusiastically accept the roles given to them. Great teams are made up of people who don’t care about who’s getting the credit, praise, or reward. Great teams may have a “star”, but it’s all the unseen members—and their unseen work that nobody talks about—who make the team great. And we all want to be a part of a great team right?!

However, it’s about more than becoming a great team. Being a valuable teammate really matters because there will be days when:

Your boss won’t treat you fairly;

Your coworkers will look out only for themselves;

Your children won’t think you’re cool anymore;

Your marriage will struggle, and you’ll feel like calling it quits;

Your best friend may be fighting a serious addiction;

Your spouse may be dying; and

Your world may seem full of people who are filled with anger and hate.

The question then will be: Will you still be a valuable teammate? Will you serve others in the world, regardless of your circumstances?

The value of a teammate—and the character of a person—is revealed when the chips are down, not up. When it’s hard, not easy. Do you have the courage and the strength to be a good teammate when being a good teammate matters the most?

So, I’ll ask you one more time: If you couldn’t play at all, would you still be a valuable teammate every day?

Call to Action

Let’s hear it, coaches and players! Don’t just think this over but answer these questions with some very concrete commitments to be a valuable teammate when the chips are down this season. Remember:

Commitment = Controllable + Observable Behavior

Here are three different ways to respond:

Letter: Write a 1+ page letter to your team detailing your many commitments to be a valuable teammate in all circumstances.

Presentation: Create a presentation or read your letter to your team. Let them know how you are committed to be a great teammate.

Team Commitments: Split the team into small groups and brainstorm potential commitments to be a valuable teammate in the various scenarios presented. Come together and agree on the 5-10 best commitments and create a team contract that everyone can sign.

The Worst Play Call of the Year

On September 30, 2018, Penn State Head Football Coach James Franklin made a very questionable play call against Ohio State during their biggest game of the season. He made the call for a run on 4th and 5, down 1 point with a minute remaining. Analysts would call it “the worst call of the year”. Fans would berate Franklin as he walked to the locker room, and social media would have a field day1 criticizing the call.

On February 1, 2015, Seattle Seahawks Head Football Coach Pete Carrol was a yard away from his team winning back-to-back Super Bowls. Instead of handing the ball to “Beast Mode” Marshawn Lynch, they passed, and the ball was intercepted, ending the game for the Seahawks. Carrol is still criticized by analysts and his fanbase to this day for making that call.

Now, both these coaches
have achieved a great deal in their careers: Carroll is a future Hall of Fame coach,
and Franklin has revived the Penn State football program.

But, this is the way
society operates. No coach is free from criticism—even the greatest ones. Coaches
like Bill Bilechick, Geno Auriemma, and Coach K can’t lose a game—much less have a season of
struggles—without people starting to criticize and claim they have “lost it” as
a coach.

Criticism of coaches is nothing new. It’s easy and fun to play armchair quarterback, right? The problem is when we bring this mentality to our own team.

Coaching Critic

“My coach just isn’t
that good.”

This is a very popular response I get, both from players when I ask them how their season is going and from parents when I ask if their child is enjoying the season. I don’t even ask about the coach, but people love to look to the coach for all their problems.

Look, I get it. If I attend any youth, high school, or even collegiate sporting event, I can be just as critical. There are a lot of coaches who aren’t doing a “great job”; Coaches who communicate poorly, teach poorly, overemphasize winning, have no control over their emotions, and are unable to build relationships with their athletes. We can find a lot of things wrong with coaches today!

But, the truth is there are a lot of bad players out there, as well. Players who are out of shape, have poor fundamentals, play selfishly, and have little mental toughness and bad attitudes. Yet, I’ve never heard a player respond with, “I’m not a very good player” when asked why his team is doing poorly.

My Coaching Evaluation

If you had asked me about my high school coach back in the day, I would have told you, “My coach isn’t very good.” Now, my assessment could have been correct. But, whether I was right or wrong wasn’t important or helpful.

It didn’t really matter if I had a coach who couldn’t coach his way out of a paper bag. What really mattered was my response, and for many years, my response was no better than that of the countless critics on social media. I blamed my coach for both my team’s struggles and my personal struggles. I was convinced he didn’t know how to coach me.

The 1 Thing You Can Do
To Change Your Team

If you could change one thing about your team, what would it be? When I ask players this question, I am likely to get the following answers:

Leadership

Play-calling

Mental toughness

Attitude

Work ethic

Focus

Communication

Heart

But, all these answers are wrong.

The only thing you can do is change yourself. You can’t change your coach or your teammates. You can only invite them to change—and the best way to do that starts with changing your behavior.

Self-Coaching

When did things change for me? Well, I quit waiting around for my coach, and I started to do the work myself. Between my junior and senior season, I went to the gym with my best friend nearly every day. We planned, executed, and recorded every aspect of our workouts. We coached and encouraged each other, and gave each other feedback on our shots and our footwork.

We also coached ourselves: Every shot, every move, every drill, and every workout. We asked ourselves, “What happened? Why did it happen? How can I do it better?”

It didn’t matter how good or bad my coach was; what mattered was that I started to put in the work. I worked hard, and I worked smart.

You don’t need a good
coach—or even a good teammate—to do this. You only need yourself. You are your
best coach. If you aren’t willing to put in the work and coach yourself, you
won’t get any better—no matter how good your coach is!

Now, the best athletes in the world will give credit to some of their coaches for their success, but if you ask them, “Who is the person most responsible for your success?”, they will always tell you the same thing: “Myself.”

Remember: The only coach who will ruin your progress is you, and the only coach who will make you a great player is you.

Jordan Patterson’s
Story

Jordan
spent her first two seasons as the backup catcher for the University of Alabama
softball team. Coming to Alabama, she knew she’d have to pay her dues and earn
a starting spot. So, she showed up everyday with a positive attitude and worked
really hard: Coming early, staying late, and looking for those extra reps. She
was a great teammate; she was coachable, and she was grateful for the
opportunity to be part of the team.

Going
into her junior season, she thought her time had come. The players ahead of her
had graduated, and she had put in the work to earn the starting spot.

Except, her coach didn’t share the same vision, and in the off-season, he recruited another catcher. It didn’t take long for Jordan to realize her coach intended for this talented, new recruit to be their starting catcher. So, Jordan was gutted. How could he do this to her? Did he not believe in her? Was all her hard work over the last two years for nothing? Had she been fooling herself all this time, thinking she was good enough to play at Alabama?

Facing Adversity

Every day,
we face adversity from the second we wake up. Simply overcoming sleepiness to
get out of bed can be a challenge!

Now, if
it’s our own doing—like we stayed up late, watching TV—typically, we can get
over it pretty quickly. But, if it’s someone else’s doing—like our coach
planning a 6 AM —practice, negativity and excuses can creep in. It’s easier to embrace
and fight through adversity we have brought upon ourselves. But, when others’
choices create adversity for us, it’s a great deal harder to stay positive.

The adversity Jordan faced by remaining a reserve player—even after doing all the right things—is not uncommon. In fact, every team in the country at every level has a few Jordans of their own. You may even be that player! Let’s be real; being a reserve is the hardest role on the team! It’s one thing to work hard and have a good attitude when you are rewarded, but when you aren’t rewarded, it’s a whole different story!

The Hardest Moment

“Sometimes, you are going to put every ounce of your being into something, and it’s not going to work out exactly the way you wanted it to. You know what? That’s life. Get over it.” – Jordan Patterson

Reserves face some really hard moments: The games you
realize you aren’t going to get “your chance”, the days you feel unappreciated
by your teammates and coaches, and even those moments when your team wins big
and everyone is happy, but inside, you feel you don’t matter because the world
has told you that your value as a player comes only from the minutes you play
and the numbers you put up.

In these moments, you have a choice: ME or the TEAM!

Let’s get something clear: 99.9% of athletes believe they are a team player! But, more often than not, they are only a team player when things go their way. The problem is things don’t always go the way we want them to life. So, the question you must ask yourself is: Will you choose to serve your team the way you are asked to serve—even when you don’t feel like it?

Jordan’s Choice

“I kept working hard: Still came early and stayed late, but my motivations for doing so began to change. Instead of being motivated by the desire for personal success, I was motivated by the desire for team success.” —Jordan Patterson

If you
ask Jordan, you can still have one of the
best experiences of your life if you choose “team” before “me”.

In her
last two seasons at Alabama, Jordan made the choice to:

Believe she was a part of something bigger
than herself.

Realize
the positive impact she could have on others as a reserve.

Use the experience to shape who she was as a
person.

So, you have two choices: You can reject your role and quit on your team, or you can embrace your role and keep fighting!

8 Ways to Embrace Your Role and Keep Fighting

Regardless of your role, the team needs you to do two things:

Embrace your role.

Keep fighting.

These two things can appear to contradict each other. So, let’s break them down by first talking about what they are not:

Embracing is not believing:

The coach is an unfair
jerk who doesn’t realize you’re the better player.

You’re never going to get your chance, so there is no
point in working hard.

The other players were
just born more naturally talented than you.

Fighting is not:

Refusing to accept any feedback or be coachable.

Choosing a negative attitude to make sure everyone knows you are upset.

Resenting your teammates who are playing instead of you.

Embracing is about what we
choose to believe. Fighting is about how we choose to act.

Embracing your role is choosing to believe:

The coaching staff is making the best decision they can, based on the information they currently have.

Your job as a reserve is critical to the success of the team.

Your teammates have put in the effort needed to be the player they are today.

Your moment may come.

Fighting is choosing to:

Show up and give your best every day, so you can make a better argument to get more playing time.

Provide value to your team by pushing the starters in practice and encouraging them during games.

Be grateful for the opportunity to be a part of something bigger than yourself.

Train and stay ready for the moment your team may need you in the game.

Insider Information

I was just goofing off and making fun of myself. As the head coach, I tried to bring some fun and humor into a late season practice. But of course, like many of my jokes, it backfired. And the worst part was I didn’t even realize it. One of my players, a loyal and sensitive fella, thought my joke was directed at him.

When this young man got home, the tears started to flow as he opened up to his mother. Young people—especially young men—are so good at masking the pain and hurt they feel to appear strong.

Luckily, in this instance, his mother and I had a positive relationship and she felt safe enough to come to me and share what her son was feeling. I remember being so grateful that his mother reached out to me, because I was able to connect with the player, apologize for the misunderstanding, and reestablish trust.

I was able to make it right. So often, we can’t make things right, because we don’t know what is wrong. We can blame the lack of communication on the athlete, but what teenager is good at initiating hard conversations? I didn’t build a culture in which people felt safe enough to give me feedback and let me know how they were feeling. And that was on me.

When it comes to so many problems in our culture, communication is at the root of nearly every one of them. Parents get a very unfiltered view into the emotions, feelings, and struggles of their child. Building a bridge—not a wall—between parent-to-coach communication is essential to serve the needs, development, and experience for the athletes.

We need to be in the loop. I have gone weeks, months, and even entire seasons without realizing a player’s parents were getting divorced, a parent lost their job, a father was in jail, or a close family member was diagnosed with a terminal illness.

So, instead of giving parents a list of things to NEVER contact you about, try giving them a list of things you want them to contact you about!

Please Contact Me If

You don’t understand why your child is not playing. I’m okay with you not agreeing with my decisions on playing time, but I want how I determine playing time to be clear to everyone in the program (coaches, players, and parents).

When something is “up” with your child. You have an unfiltered view into the emotional and mental challenges your child is facing that nobody on the team can see. An email, text, or quick phone call just to let me know when you observe something negative (or positive!) can only be helpful for me as a coach.

When something is “up” at home. Home life is challenging. In the past, my players have experienced it all: Divorce, the incarceration of a family member, the terminal illness of a family member, and financial struggles. While I don’t need every detail, I do want to be aware of the personal challenges, so I can show my support and care.

When you have a serious issue with my coaching attitude, language, or behaviors. We all screw up! I don’t need to be called out on my every mistake, but if it is consistent enough that your opinion of me as a person has changed, then I want to know about it! I want it to be very clear about what I value—not just in what I say at the start of the season, but in everything I do throughout the season.

When something is bothering you for an extended period. We all have things that piss us off and sometimes, we just need some time and space to regain perspective. But if something has been bothering you for an extended period and I may be able to help you gain some clarity and relieve that frustration, then I can make time for you.

One Last Thing

Lastly, set some boundaries with parents which will empower them to have beneficial conversations with you. Giving hard feedback is difficult, but receiving it is just as difficult. You can help guide and educate them about healthy communication and feedback, but only after you have empowered them to give you feedback. Share the strategies you use for effective feedback so that you are calling them up—not out!

Summer Jobs versus Sports

I have had a lot of different summer jobs in my life, but the hardest I ever had was installing air conditioning systems in Columbia, South Carolina.

100-degree summer days only get worse when you are crawling around in the attic of a 3-story home for 10 hours a day! Unbearable heat.

Itchy insulation.

Hands cut up so bad they look like you put them in a blender.

But at only 13 years of age, it was the only job I could get that paid better than the $2.50 an hour my mom would dish out to paint our house, chop wood, and mow our lawn.

The four summers I worked as an air conditioning man were an invaluable life experience. Also, I was fortunate enough to have other summer jobs. I stocked shelves at Blockbuster Video. I worked as a YMCA lifeguard and swim instructor. I worked my way up at a restaurant, going from dishwasher to cook to waiter and finally, to bartender. I served as a hotel receptionist and cleaned rooms. I answered phones working as a secretary. I even created and did the voice overs for a business’s instructional videos – still to this day I am not sure what we were selling!

All my summer jobs provided an opportunity for me to develop life skills that sports and my schooling could never provide.

USA Today and The Atlantic reported last year that in the last 40 years, summer employment has dropped from 60% to 35% – a staggering 25% drop. The reasons were not due to an increase in laziness, but an increase in summer schooling and summer sports participation.

While a variety of reasons exist for parents not to force their teenagers to get summer jobs, and for teenagers not to be motivated job seekers, the benefits are far too great for young people to miss out on summer employment. Whether they are working 10 hours or 40 hours a week flipping burgers, lifeguarding the community pool, mowing lawns, bagging groceries, or washing dishes, they are missing out on some hard life lessons and growth opportunities that employment offers.

11 Lessons I Learned from a Summer Job

1. Learn to take pride in your work. I wasn’t always that tough or hard of a worker. Yes, I would work hard at basketball practice. But I loved basketball. I hated my job! When I started out, my focus was on how I could maximize water and lunch breaks and minimize my effort and quality of work without getting called out by my boss.

Installing an air-conditioning system was not only uninteresting to me, but at 13 years of age, I never thought about how my service impacted other people. Doing an excellent job was not important. However, by the end of the last summer I worked as an air conditioning man, even though I still didn’t like my job, I took immense pride in not only working hard, but doing quality work that represented my boss’ company well and provided people with quality service.

2. Learn to take unfiltered criticism. My boss, Will, was a great guy and would later go on to become my confirmation sponsor at our church. But he never went easy on me. When I would do a crappy job, he wouldn’t mince words. He would let me know straight up when my job was not up to the company’s standards. And if I didn’t like the way he said it to me, tough… I would just have to find another job. Teachers and coaches are expected to filter and create a “positive” learning environment. A great deal of bosses in the real world aren’t that concerned with your feelings.

3. Learn the value of money. I started at $6.25 an hour for a very challenging and grueling job. During my last summer of working in 115-degree attics, I moved up to $10 an hour. I learned to pack my lunch because buying lunch equated to one hour of working in a grueling hot attic. I learned I didn’t want to work a minimum-wage job for the rest of my life, and I learned to appreciate the cost of basketball camps, new shoes, and gas for my parents’ car once I started to pay for these things.

4. Learn what you might want to do – or DON’T want to do – when you grow up! I learned quickly that I didn’t want to work on a construction site all my life. Stocking shelves, cleaning nasty hotel rooms, pouring pints, and answering phones was not enjoyable to me. However, I started to gain a sense of what I did enjoy doing and that helped guide me in selecting what I would study in college.

5. Learn to appreciate people in different jobs and from different backgrounds. I may not have enjoyed all those jobs, but I learned to appreciate the people building our homes. I learned to appreciate people in the service industry and the challenging jobs they have to do every day on wages that can barely support a high school teenager living in his parents’ home, eating his parents’ food. I grew a greater appreciation for people who left their country, home, and family behind for a better job and life, especially when they were still grateful for the opportunity to clean nasty hotel rooms for crappy pay.

6. Learn that you have a choice and so do your employers. Everyone is entitled to an education in America. Sports have become an entitlement to many young people and parents as well. My plethora of jobs taught me that we do have a choice, but our options will be limited without further education, experience, or skills. So, I’d better go out and start developing those, so I would have better options! I would never be entitled to a respectable job or a promotion until I had earned it.

7. Learn from other peoples’ life mistakes. Some of my coworkers were people my age, but a larger portion of people were much older than me. Sometimes, they enjoyed what they did, but often, they did not like the job and struggled to get by on the pay. And often, they would share that at some point in their life, they made some poor decisions! Dropped out of school. Got involved in drugs. Got multiple DUIs. Fathered a child in high school. Got involved in crime. I picked up early on in high school that I might make some decisions that would have a lasting negative effect on my future.

8. Learn to manage your time. Show up late to practice and your coach probably makes you run. Show up late to school and you get detention. But if you show up late to work too many times, you get fired.

9. Learn to be kind to difficult people. In the service industry you have to smile and be respectful to unhappy customers. I will never forget the day a customer chewed me out because we were all out of the movie Cars and he felt it was my fault that Blockbuster Video had run out of them, even though he had waited until 8pm on a Friday night to rent it! Being kind and respectful towards that idiot was not easy, but it was a lesson in restraint, as well as a good mental note of the person I did not want to become in 20 years!

10. Learn to build a resume. A student recently asked me for a recommendation and help writing her resume. She was graduating from high school that summer, but when it came time to put down previous employers or work experience, she had NONE! She was embarrassed and concerned that nobody would hire her without any experience. I told her it is far better for her to realize that now than to realize it when she leaves college!

11. Learn to communicate effectively. A few years ago, the parent of one of my players lectured me that it was unreasonable of me to expect a 16-year-old boy to communicate about missing practices or games. If that same young man had a job flipping burgers, you can be sure they would expect him to communicate when he was unavailable to work. If he failed to let his boss know until 4 hours before work on a Friday that he had a family birthday party to attend, I don’t think his boss would have had much pity.

Take Action

School and sports can easily be distorted and twisted, because they are judged very differently than a real job.

I have been a coach for over 11 years and I believe in the platform of sports to teach life lessons.

While applicable to life… sports aren’t real life.

Schools are not teaching the lessons or developing the skills needed to thrive in the real world.

Summer jobs are less about what you are doing or the money you are making and more about who you are becoming through the process.

Nobody wants to raise, educate or employ 22-year-old children! So, whether you are an educator, coach, parent, or teenager, we all play a role in making sure young people don’t miss out on these critical opportunities.

Parents: Compel your kid to get a job so they can help pay for some of the extra summer classes, sports camps, travel teams, special nutritional supplements, or shoes they need for the upcoming year.

Athletes: Seek employment and don’t be afraid of the hard and challenging jobs, because those are the ones that provide the greatest opportunities for growth.

Coaches: Be flexible, supportive, and even encourage young people to seek employment during the summer or even over the season.

Let me know if you are interested in my mentorship program, which has some spots opening in August. If you have any doubts about the value of the program, I have many current and former mentees who are willing to share their experience with you.

My consulting services are customized programs tailored to fit your athletic department, club, or team’s unique context. I work with administrators, coaches, athletes, and parents to create a culture that develops mental toughness, leadership, and character.